mosses from an old manse (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Robert Polito from Artforum, 2002--Painter of pictures: The Farber equation is never simple--"Ideas impossible to understand because they come through a fog of stupidity." It's scary for a writer to come across a sentence that so plainly says what it means, in which the prose is so exquisitely balanced, and you take pleasure in the way the words are put together, and you worry...
Blogcritics: Books (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
Edited and introduced by Robert Polito, poet and critic, director of the New School Writing Program since 1992, and author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, the volume will be a feast for the the movie scholar, the fan of movie criticism, and the serious film aficionado who is a regular viewer of classics films. But it will be hard going for the average reader with no background....
Avoiding the Muse (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Robert Polito and Amy Gerstler reviewed in Entertainment Weekly. Yes, EW.****************************"French-Senegalese writer Marie NDiaye has become the first black woman to win France's most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt.NDiaye, 42, was this lunchtime named winner of the 106-year-old prize, worth just €10 but seen as France's top literary honour, with a guarantee...
TheCelebrityCafe.com (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
Farber on Film, The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, an encyclopedic collection of three decades of film and art reviews, columns and essays dating back to 1942, is a comprehensive examination of manuscripts rich in art and language. Faber’s criticisms utilize a complex art form that requires intellectual examination of color, use of space, style, lighting and motion—or so explains editor Robert...
The Film Doctor (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
---How you can tell that Charles Bronson is a man. ---Recommended reading: Farber on Film : The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber , edited by Robert Polito. In a review of the new book, Howard Hampton notes some surprising aspects of Farber's critical method: "1) The notion of what movie to see and what to avoid is secondary to opening up new ways of looking at the familiar...
The Best American Poetry (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
Poetry you need to read: Robert Polito's 'Hollywood & God' and Amy Gerstler's 'Dearest Creature' by Ken Tucker Hear, hear!
Harriet (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
This year I’m teaching a new class called Literature and Film. Since I’m always thinking of ways to use poetry in the classroom, we started the year by screening Run Lola Run while we read Oedipus the King (the brilliant Robert Fagles translation replete with devastatingly ironic line breaks). In our [...]
